The Town of Riverhead, Long Island, New York, has earn itself a place in the history of technology by employing the services of Google Earth to find swimming pools which did not have a permit. Chief Building Inspector Leroy Barnes Jr. declared that 250 permit-free pools had been identified thanks to Google’s technology. According to Chris Matyszczyk, The town has reportedly earned $75,000 through this activity.
I wonder if Google will be contacting the Chief Building Inspector to ascertain the amount of compensation to be paid for breach of the Google Earth End User License Agreement, which I note reads as follows:
1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties.
Riverhead’s no doubt honorable intention would be to stick within the letter of the law, so may I suggest that they donate the additional revenue to charity, as being income that they would not otherwise have been able to legally obtain. Remember, you can’t even use free Google Earth at work for personal reasons.
Then there is just the matter of the unpaid fees to Google…
To read the original article by Chris Matyszczyk, click here to see his posting on Technically Incorrect.
For more on the use of Google Earth, see the WordPress blog post by James Fee on Geospatial Technology, Web Mapping and Spatial Services website
Search Google Google Earth to find Swimming Pools